art

It was bound to happen eventually. Today, Sigma is announcing something that has us very, very excited. The new Sigma 24mm f1.4 DG HSM Art lens is their latest prime offering for full frame DSLRs (Canon, Nikon and Sony) and joins the 35mm and 50mm art lenses as the trinity for street photographers.

So what’s got us so excited? According to the summary of the press release, “The lens achieves a maximum magnification of 1:5.3 with a minimum focusing distance of 9.8 inches.” Additionally, the 24mm incorporates both “F” Low Dispersion (FLD) glass and Special Low Dispersion (SLD) glass, has an optical formula 15 elements in 11 groups which the company claims to help to minimize chromatic aberration of magnification especially in the edge of the image field, and has aspherical elements placed near the rear of the lens. Finally, the lens has manual focus overrride even when the autofocus is activated.

There is no official word on pricing yet, but all of Sigma’s primes have won Editor’s Choice awards from us.

Portraiture is an art form not only within photography, but in drawings and paintings. Years before photography, artists were commissioned to make people look their best in drawings and oil paintings. Photography is different in that we can capture a much more true likeness–which is a blessing and a curse. Taking a portrait of someone requires planning, attention to details, and overall a vision. If the person has an idea of how they want to look, then you need to bring that to pixels. But otherwise, you should have a vision and follow a step by step process.

Here are things to remember before you take a portrait–from a guy that’s been doing it for years and years.

You create compelling work. I know you may hear this all the time, and I know that you’ve got all the art buyers in the Upper East Side, Chelsea and Bushwick around your fingers. So I want to tell you something: congratulations. You’ve seriously done a terrific job of showing the world that art is what comes first. It absolutely does come before gear, and a creative vision will always win out over someone toting around a 5D without a creative vision. As a creative, I want to thank you for making the world realize that don’t need the best gear in the world to create compelling imagery.

But at the same time, I want you to be well aware of your placement in the art world. Your prints in the galleries are beautiful, and I don’t think that I can say that enough. I want you to know, however, about what I’m actually capable of doing with a dedicated camera. I’m a creative with a creative vision and I will express my creativity in nowhere near as fast a pace as yours. What you’ll get from me, however, is work that took time, in which I debated whether I should crop in just a bit more, flip the image, or edit it a completely different way.

Beyond that, I want you to know that if I ever get back into shooting weddings, engagements, events or into fully shooting fashion campaigns again that I will never show up to a shoot with my Nexus 5 or the latest victim of Bendgate. I will do everything I can to work with a client to create my own lighting, deliver the vision and product that they want, and in the end, I will push my art over the fact that I’m using the latest camera from Sony.

I think that as much as you’ve become entranced with not needing a dedicated camera to create excellent images, you’ve instead become so enthralled by the other type of technology: your phone. If we switch equipment for a month, can you deliver the same work that you did? Does that make you truly an artist or some person that shoots an image, applies a filter, and wins over the hearts of curators everywhere.

In closing, what I’m saying is that you’re a creative and that I’m a creative, but that creativity should be the main priority. In the same way you can wow art buyers with your efficient and affordable way to capture an image, I can give a bride and groom photos that they’ll cry over years from now.

Maybe we can talk about it one day over coffee–which we will both then attempt to photograph beautifully.

Swedish and Berlin-based mixed media photographer Erik Johansson has created astounding work that is perhaps only surpassed by his remarkable process. We featured an image of his earlier on. At first glance, his surreal images – essentially landscape photographs transformed into something more magical – rouse wonder in people, and upon closer inspection, they are dressed to impress, with every minor detail considered and perfected.

It’s his process, however, that really had us at hello. While many Photoshop artists use stock images to create their art, Erik is going out of his way to make his photographs more realistic and entirely his own. He meticulously draws, paints, creates miniature sets and cardboard cutouts, and shoots different spots and locations himself, all the while paying great attention to every single detail, before blending all these aspects together in a single photograph.

Erik tells the Phoblographer:

“To me photography is a way to collect material to realize the ideas in my mind. I get inspired by things around me in my daily life and all kinds of things I see. Although one photo can consist hundreds of layers I always want it to look like it could have been captured. Every new project is a new challenge and my goal is to realize it as realistic as possible.”

Erik’s dedication to the craft is something we don’t see every day, which makes his work all the more inspiring. And with his painstaking creations, he actualizes images in his mind and molds them into something real for others.

As he points out, “I don’t capture moments, I capture ideas.”

See Erik Johansson’s breathtaking work and his behind-the-scenes videos after the jump.

“I’ve taken pictures for many years, my mother always told me that in her young years she was developing and retouching photographs in her cousin’s laboratory, and still colorizing portraits with special inks; so it was just a familiar tradition, which still survives in me even if I am a musician,” says Giancarlo Rado on how he got into photography. He explains that it’s like telling stories–and a story is what he’s telling in his series entitled, “Waiting for Summer.”

Toting around a Hasselblad SLR with a 80mm lens, Mr. Rado loves the square format. And when working on the series, he states that it’s like taking a portrait of a landscape. He believes in the existential idea that the earth, sky, and sea all connect along with ideals and feelings deeply involved in our minds when traveling to the beach during the winter. With that said, he often searches the beach looking for relationships that he thinks will evoke stories.

“I go to the beach mainly for the horizontal light that I know that soon or later will come. This light allows the evocation of shadows and situations particularly important for me,” states Mr. Rado. “I know very well the places where I shall go and sooner or later the expected situation will appear–like and astral conjunction of phenomena which may reflect feeling such as loneliness, fear, peace, quietness, and what else connected with the never fading border between interior and exterior world.”

Giancarlo’s photos evoke the sense of loneliness and indeed search for relationships. The series is after the jump.

In today’s world of instant gratification and digital photography, we sometimes forget that there are some photographic processes that create beautiful results. One of those forms is large format photography–which often involves something bigger than a 4×5 inch piece of film. Photographer Lúis Plácido shared a video on Vimeo a while back of his process involving large format photography. After lugging out a huge camera and tripod, you need to then set the camera up, place a lens onto it, position your subject, focus the camera, insert the film, then shoot. But that’s not the end. There is still the whole development process that’s involved.